Here is another of Wooshii’s PRO interviews, this time with animator Alison Sanders, who worked on such studio films as The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The Tale of Desperaux, The Golden Compass, and Cats and Dogs 2.
You can check her reel right here. So, without further ado, let’s get things rolling:
How did you get started in all things creative? And what made you decide you wanted a career in animation specifically?
I’ve always been interested in creative endeavors. I studied a lot of traditional art in college, specifically sculpture. While I was never very good with it, I eventually realized that I was spending more time coming up with little stories behind the creatures I was sculpting than I was focusing on the technical details. That lead naturally to storytelling & eventually animation.
How did you manage to break in the industry?
I spent a number of years after college working as a 3d generalist, still a bit lost as to if I wanted to do modeling or animation or rigging. Eventually I settled on wanting to do animation, but didn’t have the skill level to get the film jobs that I wanted. When I heard about Animation Mentor I enrolled in the first class, finished the course, and was hired shortly thereafter by Framestore CFC to work on Golden Compass. I think that focusing my education & reel on animation specifically & increasing my skill level significantly is what finally got me into the industry.
What inspires you?
I am really inspired by quality short films. Especially the stuff that is turned out of Gobelins each year. Overall any animated short film festivals are always inspiring. It’s extremely difficult to tell a compelling story in a short form, so I’m always impressed when it’s successful. Also a short film gives the artist much more ability to play with different styles, so you get some really interesting stuff that would be to work intensive for a long format film.
[Ed. Note: to further illustrate this, we chose a video of Gobelins to go with it, 5 really short shorts who opened up the Annency animation festival in 2009 - made by 2nd year students!!]
3 movies on a desert island, which ones would you pick?
The Piano – Just a beautiful use of color & music & characters
Amelie – Again love the use of color & character development
Triplets of Belleville – Simply a beautiful film that I can watch again & again.
Can you tell us briefly about your role in the different feature films you’ve worked on?
I’ve worked solely as an animator on all the feature films that I’ve worked on. One of the things that I’ve always enjoyed about working on features is the way that they are both a team and individual effort. You spend a great deal of time immersed in your own shot, polishing & honing your craft to make that shot shine as much as possible. At the same time though you have to be aware of the shots and the work that surround yours to keep everything consistent in quality and style.
(Question by Eammy) In the Golden Compass, the polar bears fit in very well with the live action and the other CG elements. I find it interesting how at times the polar bears move about realistically like real life bears, and other times they are talking english with excellent animation. How were you able to animate such complexity? Did you use footage of real bears to help? Did you actually have to animate the movements and lip-syncing manually?
We spent a LOT of time watching reference & working on getting realistic body animation on the bears. I think spending so much time doing research & watching reference made all the difference. Also just trying to be aware of the difficulties of making a walking/talking polar bear. Trying to think how an animal would express the same emotions as a human in a more animalistic manor. We were very conscious that we didn’t want do a ‘guy in a bear suit’ type of animation, but think more how a bear actually moves & acts & how we could incorporate those movements.
All of the animation for the bears was hand-keyed, including the facial animation. Again, a lot of time was spent watching reference & trying to incorporate that into the work.
What do you think of all the 3D animation vs Motion/performance capture debate? And how about 2D vs. 3D?
I have never actually worked with motion capture, so I can’t speak much about it on a work front. I do think it can be a useful tool sometimes for large-scale work, but is sometimes over-used or used incorrectly.
I have a great love of 2d. I think you can do some things in 2d that you simply can not do in 3d or can only do with great difficultly. There is also a great deal of beauty in seeing the individual lines of the artists hand on each frame. It’s a much more intimate medium than 3d, where it takes a larger team of people to bring each frame to completion.
In the 2d vs 3d debate I really think they are just different mediums & should be treated as such. I don’t think 2d is ‘dying out’ or anything like that. 3d is more popular right now b/c it’s the new kid on the block in the big scheme of things. Like so many things, styles & preferences cycle though over the years, and I’m sure here in a couple years something else will come along & kick 3d to the curb for a while.
What advice would you give creatives and people wanting to break in the industry?
I think if you want to do animation specifically I would highly recommend animation mentor as a program. I am a bit biased as I am currently teaching there & received my education there. If that’s not an option I would suggest diving in & doing as much animation as you can. Also try to get as much feedback as you can and really work on taking that feedback on board & incorporating it into your work. Try to keep your pieces short & simple at first so that you don’t get overwhelmed. A lot of people start off with a huge idea for a 30 second animation for their first shot, when really they need to do 10 3second shots instead. That will get them used to planning, starting and finishing a shot and with each full iteration they will learn more & more.
Finally, what’s next for you, professionally – you know what you’ll be working next? Any dream projects you’d want to do in the future? 
I don’t know yet what I’ll be doing next professionally. I would love to work on a short film of my own & perhaps that’s in the cards next. I’m currently taking a bit of time off to start a family, and haven’t decided how long I will take off. Film is a very fickle industry and it’s not uncommon to take a couple months of each year off between projects and to not know where or what you will always be working on next. The positive side of that is that you get to take time off periodically to vacation, work on personal projects, etc…
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Alright, that’s it! Once again, we were lucky to get such great and insightful answers. We’d like to thank Alison for taking some time to answer these and wish her the best!
Till the next PRO interview 